when life hands you lemons...

Of course my brain caught up with my eyes in the middle of preparing these ingredients. The suspicion started to grow as I looked at the heap of steeping lemons slices, and even with the substitution of some meyer lemons, I thought, "Really?? This is not going to taste good." I typed into the computer with my pruney, lemony fingers and confirmed my worst fears.

I went into lazy damage control. I took out some regular lemon and added more sugar and meyer lemon. I cut some of the slices into slivers because I thought there'd be a big chewiness problem. Tarts are not supposed to be full of chewy rinds. I substituted the regular sugar strewn on top with crushed sugar crystals the Mom buys for coffee.

I just should have stopped. Made a clean break. "You may be pretty but this just isn't going to work out. I'm leaving you in pieces, pieces, pieces of you." And the lemon tart components would have done a little jig.

I had a slice. Grossness confirmed. I threw the rest of it out. The crust had been fine, the sugar fun to crunch into, the insides? Bitter, pithey (those lemons, they aren't longwinded), chewy, unpleasant. I should've stuck with my original idea of lemon cake with raspberry jam.

So I whipped up a batch of banana muffins and added the bar of Scharffen Berger gianduja I had lying around, thinking I'd go for the Nutella banana combo. Not enough choc, but it diverted me from acid lemon tears.